42 comments:

Five miles out of London on the Western AvenueMust have been a wonder when it was brand newTalkin' 'bout the splendour of the Hoover factoryI know that you'd agree if you had seen it tooIt's not a matter of life or deathBut what is, what is ?It doesn't matter if I take another breathWho cares ? Who cares ?

My mates warned me long agoShe will make you blue oo ooThey said you've been had

Untidy tart they told me soThe home that I once knew oo ooWas a filthy floozys pad

ONE MORE, TWO MOREFleas on the bedroom floorNo ones ever seen her, with a vacuum cleanerTHREE MORE, FOUR MOREMice unite at the kitchen doorIT WERN'T NO ROTTEN RUMOUR,HE COULD NEVER MOVE HERAnd I never saw her with a hoover.

Ide fell for a hag from HellShe wernt the one to woo oo ooIn my new hovel.

ONE MORE....[Guitar]

She's nicked off, I'm in a spinThe first thing I shall do oo ooIs plug the hoover in.

Just over two years ago, at the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans, poor people endured days of no food or water and stifling heat, as baseless reports circulated about rapes and murders, and National Guardsmen sent to help barricaded themselves instead behind locked doors. How come?" ---NYT

Just over two years ago, at the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans, poor people endured days of no food or water and stifling heat, as baseless reports circulated about rapes and murders, and National Guardsmen sent to help barricaded themselves instead behind locked doors. How come?"

...when the Superdome was established as a shelter of last resort on the weekend before Katrina hit, the Louisiana National Guard sent several hundred soldiers there who were trained in policing and crowd control. They also, as rarely noted, stocked huge quantities of combat rations, also known as Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), and water, both of which were never in short supply, according to Maj. Ed Bush, who was inside the Dome the whole time.

....

Besides rescuers and local first responders, another big story at the Dome was the medical center. Like a Chinook helicopter landing on your roof, that sure was hard to miss. Fifteen doctors and a total of 65 medical personnel set up at the New Orleans Arena, within spitting distance of the Dome. It was primarily for survivors brought in by air and boat, but also for people in the Superdome with medical problems. There was never any shortage of medical care, Dressler and Bush both said.

"The government responses to these disasters have little or nothing to do with the outcomes. The difference lies in the people affected. In California, you have mostly working and educated people taking responsibility for themselves and helping each other and first responders as best as they can. In New Orleans, you had mostly lifetime and/or multi-generational welfare recipients, lazily waiting around for yet another bailout, quick to blame somebody else, raping and pillaging at first opportunity, and actually shooting at first responders sent to help them."--LA Times

Sullivan has another real gem on his site today. After hearing that Redstate.org banned Ron Paul supporters from commenting on their website (for being prolifically annoying and obnoxious), Sullivan welcomed them to come over to the Daily Dish, where debate was welcome. As Sullivan does not allow comments, the offer was an empty gesture.

The LA Times has a nice little self-congratulatory fantasy going on. In California right now, you have a state and federal response that learned from the failures after the levees broke in New Orleans (the storm didn't do to New Orleans what it did to Mississippi; the levee failures, however, flooded 80 percent of the city, and the water stayed for more than three weeks.)

In Qualcomm Stadium, there are abouit 10,000 people in relative comfort, with access to food, water, and even entertainment. Why? The stadium isn't surrounded by 5 feet of water. The roof wasn't torn off by a storm, and the power hasn't been lost, rendering air conditioning, toilets, and lights unusable.

There is no comparison between the disaster in New Orleans in 2005 and the disaster in California currently playing out. They are not similar. I have friends and acquaintances currently evacuated and awaiting news about their homes. I pray they are comforted as they wait, and that their property will not be lost. Anyone who prefers to spend this time pointing fingers at New Orleanians and turning this into some kind of amusement can go straight to hell.

Beth, that comment sounds like a letter to the editor of the LA Times. I sincerely doubt the Times would editorialize about welfare recipients "lazily waiting around for yet another bailout, quick to blame somebody else, raping and pillaging at first opportunity..."

"Anyone who prefers to spend this time pointing fingers at New Orleanians and turning this into some kind of amusement can go straight to hell."

If Inglewood were burning, do you think there would be massage therapists unfolding their tables at the Great Western Forum right now? Please.

No one is pointing fingers, just pointing out the obvious! Certain classes of people are treated differently because they have come to enjoy a different level of expectations. It's not about blaming anyone. Classy and original though, telling people to go to hell. Melodramatics shine on this blog.

I haven't experienced any hurricanes but I'm quite familiar with these brush fires. (Some of my earliest memories of the sky turning dark red and ash raining down, and I came home once to a driveway full of fire engines.)

One thing about brush fires is that they don't hit the heart of the infrastructure. Qualcomm isn't cut off from anything so, of course, the amenities are going to be nicer. Fewer people need to stay there because they have options.

Also, because information can flow in and out, you get less opportunity for urban legend.

So, yeah, I agree: This seems like more of the libel we saw with Katrina which, even though most of have been debunked, still persists in some folks' minds.

zps, take a little stroll around the internet. You'll find the Malkins and Instapundits enjoying a snarky little bit of inexplicable schadenfreude, comparing these fires and post-Katrina New Orleans. I'm not inventing melodrama here. I've simply seen enough of it over the past couple of days to be sickened. And yep, they can all go straight to hell.

Jeff, instapundit is linking to stories lauding the California reaction and asking leading questions, rhetorically since he doesn't allow comments, "WELCOME TO NON-NEW ORLEANS:" Bill Bradley reports from the SoCal fires. Hmm. Hurricane Charley in Florida went okay. Katrina response in Mississippi was a lot better than in New Orleans. Now California seems to be dealing with this disaster competently. What could explain these differences?" Go to his site and just look for "New Orleans" in the text. He does link to one article that refutes the MSM narrative of the "raping babies" in the Superdome stories, but the assumptions behind the questions in the quote above, he never addresses. It's his usual "I'm just saying..." kind of bullshit.

I want to add that I check out instapundit because I actually like Glenn R's take on a number of things, mainly literature, geeky tech stories, and I agree with his take on uncontrolled police raids, for example. But he has a really annoying tendency to buy into a narrative quickly, and do that little vague question thing. He linked uncritically this week to a supposed "debunking" of Jena 6 "myths" from a reporter at the Jena paper, and puts it out as if it's the last word on the story. R. Balko over at reason's Hit and Run blog does a much better job calling out the logic and credibility problems with the same story, and acknowledging at the same time the obvious weaknesses in the Jena 6 defenders' positions. I wish Reynolds, who I think is damned smart, would be as evenhanded.

Well, San Diego planned (and acted) a heck of a lot better than the New Orleans and Louisiana governments did.

But aside from that, the major difference is that the city of San Diego itself was mostly untouched. The fires struck most of the communities *around* the city, but the city itself basically escaped unscathed. That was a great logistical advantage.

Mississippi did not have standing flood waters that remained in place after the storm. Nevertheless, response immediately after the storm in Mississippi was every bit as chaotic, disorganized and incompetent thanks to "heckova job Brownie" as it was in New Orleans. And the misappropriation, waste fraud and abuse in the managing of recovery money in Mississippi(where money has gone not to the people who need it but rich developers, Casino owners, and friends of Haley Barbour), make the most corrupt Louisianan green with envy.

Then why didn't you engage him on the substance of what he said instead of the ad-hominem dig "he was buying into a narrative", implying he didn't know what he was talking about. Maybe he didn't, but it's not clear to me that he investigated it any less than, say, Beth.

Nevertheless, response immediately after the storm in Mississippi was every bit as chaotic, disorganized and incompetent thanks to "heckova job Brownie" as it was in New Orleans.

If the state and local officials had been even vaguely*competent -- or even a little less INcompetent -- the fact that FEMA sucks wouldn't have mattered. FEMA is -- and is SUPPOSED to be -- the last resort. It is not the first responder, nor should it ever be.

Here in San Diego, FEMA didn't even have a system in place for people to request aid until yesterday -- after the worst of the fires were over and a lot of the evacuees were already returning home. But we still came through ok, because we had fire plans in place that were a little more thought out than "wait until the last possible minute and then blame the nearest available Republican".

the fact that FEMA sucks wouldn't have mattered. FEMA is -- and is SUPPOSED to be -- the last resort.

While it is true that FEMA is not the first responder, it is entirely untrue that FEMA is "the last resort". FEMA is supposed to swing into action upon the declaration of a federal disaster area (which in the case of Katrina actually occurred on the Saturday before the storm hit) and be on the ground providing aid within 72 hours. FEMA provides aid when local and state resources are overwhelmed, which was certainly the case with Katrina.

Wildfires, as destructive as they are, are an order of magnitude less destructive than a hurricane. Just as an example, after Katrina power was out from just west Baton Rouge (and was spotty in Baton Rouge itself) to the Florida border and as much as one hundred miles inland. Ask yourself this. Would San Diego's response have been so smooth if electrical service had been interrupted throughout the county?